The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Monday rejected the extension of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leader Azam Swati’s additional physical remand in the case pertaining to his controversial tweet about state institutions.
\nAfter rejecting the Federal Investigation Agency’s (FIA) request for the extension, the IHC ordered for the accused to be sent to jail on judicial remand.
\nThe development comes a day after the court granted a one-day extension for Swati\u2019s remand.
\nIn the earlier hearing, the prosecutor argued that an extension was required for the investigation officer to recover the PTI leader\u2019s cell phone which was used to post the controversial tweet.
\nBail plea filed
\nIn a separate development, the PTI leader filed a post-arrest bail application. His counsel Sohail Khan Swati appeared before the court on his behalf.
\nSpecial Judge Central Raja Asif Mehmood issued notices to the FIA over the petition, and directed to submit a by October 19.
\nThe court also summoned the FIA investigator, along with all the record pertaining to the case.
\nThe hearing of the case will now be held on January 19.
\n‘Will drag DG FIA to court’
\nBefore his court appearance on Sunday, Swati, while speaking to the media, had accused Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah and the director general FIA, claiming they had registered a first information report (FIR) against him and handed him over to agencies who had tortured him.
\n\u201cI will bring them forward according to the constitution. I will take DG FIA to court and will file a case against the director of Cybercrime Wing and his staff as well,\u201d he said.
\n\u201cThey are asking me why did I defend Senator Saifullah? He is the right-hand man of Imran Khan and an honest man. What did he do?\u201d questioned Swati, adding that he would have stood up the same way even for an ordinary party worker as well.
\nThe arrest
\nSwati was taken into custody last Thursday morning by FIA\u2019s cybercrime unit for allegedly making \u2018controversial tweets\u2019 against state institutions, including the army chief.
\nIn a series of tweets on Wednesday, following the acquittal of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and his son Hamza Shehbaz in the high-profile money laundering case, the PTI leader implicated the army for abetting acquittals of the Sharif family.
\n\u201cI wish Imran khan allow[s] me, I would come straight to Gate 4 in Rawalpindi to challenge those who have ruined this country,\u201d he said.
\n\u201cMr Bajwa congratulations to you and few with you. Your plan is really working and all criminals are getting free at cost of this country,\u201d he added.
\n\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Monday rejected the extension of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leader Azam Swati’s additional physical remand in the case pertaining to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1839,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news-updates"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1838\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}